How far will the escalation between China and the United States go? The term cold war between the two world giants is not exaggerated, given the latest images. Those, Monday morning, of agents of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, masks on the face and white coveralls of protection against the Covid-19, investing the American consulate of Chengdu, metropolis of 16.5 million inhabitants in the southwest from the country. At dawn, the star-spangled banner adorning the building had been taken down, while a noria of trucks had moved overnight the offices of American diplomats, who had left the scene on summons from Beijing.
The staging was calm, solemn, contrasting with the images of Sunday, where a crowd of “patriotic” demonstrators waved red flags and shouted slogans against American “aggression”. This closure is the response to that, Saturday, July 25, of the Chinese consulate in Houston (Texas): but there, the American federal agents had forced with hammers and drills the doors of the diplomatic enclosure, evacuated by its agents who had received a three-day ultimatum from Washington.
An economic and ideological war
Why this new episode of tension? Officially, on the American side, for reasons of national security. The Houston consulate was no other, accuses US Secretary of State (head of diplomacy) Mike Pompeo, that an advanced base of "Chinese espionage" and "theft of intellectual property". Several economic espionage cases have broken out in recent years, in the United States but also in France. Unofficially, this would rather serve as a pretext for Washington to express a more lively and deeper antagonism. "China today is more and more authoritarian inside the country, and more aggressive in its hostility to freedom everywhere else," Pompeo asserted.
In addition to the excessive trade war desired by Donald Trump since entering the White House, there have been added the burning issues of Hong Kong and the Uighurs and mutual accusations about the origin of the Covid-19 pandemic. The Communist regime continues to tighten the grip on the former British colony, destroying its more liberal status. And accuses the Americans of secretly encouraging dissidents. The subjugation of Hong Kong and the persecution of the Uighur Muslim minority in Xinjiang has already prompted Washington to take economic sanctions against the country.
However, President Xi Jinping seems for the moment to calibrate his response. Thus, Beijing regrets in a press release the state of relations with the United States and rejects the responsibility on the latter. In addition, the Sinologists point out that if the regime had wanted to react harder, it is the American consulate in Hong Kong, more strategic, that it would have closed rather than that of Chengdu. It might be the next level of escalation.